Someone know a stable motherboard? Tired of Asus

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: oldfart
The BIG P.S. is also bunk. I run an Antec TruePower 330W PS on a 1.6A @ 2.4 with a Ti4600. You dont need a big wattage supply. Quality is more important

completely.
I just got an EPoX board coming to me.. i hope it's as good as it's suppose to be..

 

[kallekill]

My PS is a "Noise Control PC Winner 300W, ATX 2.01" 300W and retails for about 60$ over here. They say it's supposed to be really good and it is quiet. Anyway, skipping problems in movies doesn't sound like a bad PS, or do you think it could be that? My friend and I bought our motherboards almost at the same time so I guess that they have several common chips on them. Maybe there is some chip or thing on the motherboard that is causing the skipping.

Do you think I will solve the problem by changing the motherboard or will I just shell out 150 $ to find out that it didn't help. I'm going crazy because of this computer. I have been struggling with it for half a year now. I read on Anandtech about a new board out called "ECS L4S8A (SiS 648)" that's cheap and have lot's of features. Anyone know if it's any good?

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: kallekill
My PS is a "Noise Control PC Winner 300W, ATX 2.01" 300W and retails for about 60$ over here. They say it's supposed to be really good and it is quiet. Anyway, skipping problems in movies doesn't sound like a bad PS, or do you think it could be that? My friend and I bought our motherboards almost at the same time so I guess that they have several common chips on them. Maybe there is some chip or thing on the motherboard that is causing the skipping.

Do you think I will solve the problem by changing the motherboard or will I just shell out 150 $ to find out that it didn't help. I'm going crazy because of this computer. I have been struggling with it for half a year now. I read on Anandtech about a new board out called "ECS L4S8A (SiS 648)" that's cheap and have lot's of features. Anyone know if it's any good?

cheap, well yeah it is a cheap board. how it is not sure but I don't trust it to last.

 

[LazyBastard]

Originally posted by: kallekill

I don't think it is the onboard audio that is causing it because I have disabled it in BIOS. My friend who has the same problem has a Asus MicroATX board and he have tried different memoy in his computer and it didn't help. He is running SDRAM and I am running DDR. I'm thinking of getting one of those new dual DDR-boards, maybe a MSI board if they have one. I've heard they MSI don't overclock so good but I'm willing to take that if I just get rid of the skipping in movies.

Have you run any programs that will test the stability of your system, like Prime95 torture test? That will test your CPU and memory. There has to be some free program around that will test your harddrive performance.

If I had to guess at where the problem is, I'd look at the hard drive, power supply, then memory, in that order, according to the description of your problem.

 

[RanDum72]

With your OC (from 1.6ghz to 2.1ghz) what kind of frequencies are you running your PC/AGP clocks? Does the board have an AGP/PCI lock? If not, then thats probably the cause of all the problems. Not all video cards run reliably with AGP clocks run higher than spec. Neither does PCI cards and harddrives. If you run the CPU at 1.6ghz, does everything seem fine?

 

[kallekill]

Originally posted by: RanDum72
With your OC (from 1.6ghz to 2.1ghz) what kind of frequencies are you running your PC/AGP clocks? Does the board have an AGP/PCI lock? If not, then thats probably the cause of all the problems. Not all video cards run reliably with AGP clocks run higher than spec. Neither does PCI cards and harddrives. If you run the CPU at 1.6ghz, does everything seem fine?

I have the same problem when running everything at default speed so overclocking is not the problem. I haven't run prime95 but I have run a memorytest for several hours without any errors. I have tried different harddrives so that can't be it. It could be the IDE-controller on the motherboard that is causing it because I have had much trouble with it before. It took me several weeks of random reboots before I figured out that the P4B266 is incompatible with IBM's latest harddrives. The fourth call to IBM?s support confirmed this. The motherboard even destroyed one of my IBM-drives. I had to return it and I thought I just got a bad drive that was causing the reboots but then I got reboots on the new one they send me too.

My friend who has the same skipping-problem on his Asusboard has tested several different memories so that can't be it. I haven't tried a different power supply. Maybe I should do that before I throw the motherboard out the window. It sounds a little weird that a bad PS can cause this kind of errors though.

My computer froze just now when I tried to open Word and the HDD light was constantly red. I am running Windows ME now were I don't have the skipping problems in movies. I have never experienced this freeze in Windows 2000 but I remember it happened a while ago in Windows ME while loading a level in Noone Lives Forever 2. It could be because of the 13 GB Western Digital harddrive that I am running Win ME on. I had to return one of these before when it just died. I have the same weird sound on the new drive as I had on the old that died. It sounds like it spins down and then up fast again. I've heard that this is a common sound on old WD drives.

But I'm not using this drive when running Windows 2000 so it isn't what's causing the skips.

 

[kallekill]

I have found this old motherboard to be pretty cheap: MSI 645-ULTRA-C. Maybe it's better to buy old motherboards were the bugs hopefully has been fixed. Anyone know if this board is any good and if I am will get my P4 1.6 to 2.1 Ghz with it.